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Commercialization

ULA Embraces The Dark Side of the Force

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 4, 2016
Filed under , , , , , , ,

Keith’s note: Now that Sen. Shelby has used his Dark Side powers to enable ULA’s addiction to Russian engines to continue, ULA is off using its staff to sow seeds of anti-reusable technology such as that being promoted by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. This slow motion desperation is a clear sign of a paradigm shift that has begun to leave some companies behind. In this case its ULA.
ULA Gets A Russian Christmas Gift From Sen. Shelby, earlier post
Sen. Shelby: The King Of Political Cronyism and Hypocrisy, earlier post
Knights Templar Inspired Business Moves at ULA, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

165 responses to “ULA Embraces The Dark Side of the Force”

  1. muomega0 says:
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    An ideal opportunity for reuse would be to launch dirt cheap, Class D payload: propellant. Another way to reduce costs is to increase flight rate and reduce the number of product lines. DOD has a reduced flight rate due in part by less $ for assets. NASA is spending $3B/ yr on a HLV/capsule, only needs ~20mT LV, and has no money for missions. The world and US have excess launch capacity.

    Imagine if NASA shifted its unneeded HLV/Orion expenditures to mission hardware, the DOD consolidated SLS/Atlas/Delta with Falcon with the goal of reuse, and the LVs take risk to launch 100 to 400mT/yr for NASA (70% is propellant), which provides a stable long term demand to lower launch costs, essential to establish new markets.

    The 2005 Congress gave Exploration the worse space policy ever and they choose to keep all the LVs separate and the 2015 Congress decided that exporting oil and giving HLV a plus up protected their ‘interests’, not economic access to space. They also give socialistic subsidies to oil, corn, and err, LVs, to name but a few. Go Figure.

    • Todd Austin says:
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      Subsidies are anticompetitive only when *you* want them, never when *I* want them – first rule of bombast in American politics.

      DoD is passionate about wanting multiple launch options. They would never agree to consolidating all the systems into one.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        The reason they’re passionate about having multiple options is the failure of the space shuttle program to live up to its promises. The Challenger disaster gave them the excuse they needed to get *out* of that failed program and fund Titan IV followed by the EELVs.

      • muomega0 says:
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        SLS/Delta/Altas are consolidated w/o solids with the goal of reuse is the 2nd nonsole source LV to Falcon.

        Those who want high speed cheaper internet access likely support the direct subsidy to ULA or perhaps rather prefer the USG requesting a stable demand.

        “The Secretary of Defense shall fund the annual fixed costs for both launch service providers until certifying to the President that a capability that reliably provides assured access to space can be maintained without two EELV providers”.

        Link to study for the 2005 Keep LV Separate Policy. If you do not like the USG answer, you fund another. http://www.rand.org/content

  2. wwheaton says:
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    I wonder if SpaceX could make money by establishing an LH2/LOX fuel depot in LEO, say near the ISS (like 100 km ahead or behind it in orbit.) They could greatly improve the Falcon9’s payload capability to ISS orbit by switching to an LH2/LOX second stage, and then accumulate the (required, essentially) contingency propellant needed to reach ISS there, and use it for a variety of potential purposes (like carrying a crew through the radiation belts fast enough to avoid that hazard, leaving massive cargo for SEP transport to HEO.)

    • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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      No. NASA doesn’t require increased payload to ISS and SpaceX is focussed on Mars using their own pathway.
      Cheers

    • fcrary says:
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      No. Their contract with NASA is pretty specific about what goes to ISS, what secondary payloads are permitted and what they can do between launch and docking with ISS. A side trip to top off a cryogenic fuel depot isn’t in the cards. I also think they are required to return the Dragon carrying whatever payload NASA requests.

      • wwheaton says:
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        I’m not suggesting that SpaceX’s Dragon alter its program. It separates from the second stage of the Falcon9, and goes to ISS under its own power.

        I’m saying that after separation of the Dragon, the Falcon stage2 would not have used its contingency propellant, which it must carry as insurance that it can deliver its contractual payload to ISS. I’m suggesting that instead it use that unneeded fuel to proceed to the depot **after** it has fulfilled its obligation to NASA, instead of dumping itself in the Pacific. The required contingency is probably a few percent of the fuel load needed to place Dragon in its nominal delivery orbit. After visiting the depot, it can go into the Pacific (or whatever SpaceX wants to do with it.)

        Note that it currently delivers the Dragon into an orbit significantly different than the ISS orbit, and the Dragon then uses its own thrusters to complete the rendezvous, so the second stage never comes near ISS. Of course the revised Falcon9 would be a new rocket, with almost twice the payload capacity to LEO, so NASA would have to buy off on that, just as they must approve the sort of upgrades SpaceX has already made to the Falcon9.

        And of course government agencies sometimes approve (or not) things for unstated political reasons. I imagine ULA and Orbital Sciences would not be pleased if SpaceX were to take off on this improvement to Falcon9. But SpaceX has been pretty good at pushing through things that threaten their competitors. And I think NASA, while not perfect, is more resistant to such political pressure than some other agencies. A lot of NASA folks truly BELIEVE in space exploration, after all — and therefore like logical technical improvements.

        The real hurdle (I think) is Elon’s stated dislike of LH2/LOX. But I hope the logic of the scheme might win him over. He’s pretty smart, and I think he might be persuaded if it really makes good business and technical sense, as I think it may.

        • fcrary says:
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          That’s an interesting idea, but it’s got some problems.

          You mention a SpaceX or Elon dislike for liquid hydrogen. Overcoming that, if you are correct, is an issue. But so is adding launch site facilities to deal with deep cryogenic fluids.

          NASA may not want extra hydrogen or oxygen on the same vehicle as their resupply spacecraft, even as a secondary payload attached to the second stage rather than the Dragon. Small but non-zero added risk isn’t something NASA managers are fond of, unless their own program benefits from it.

          You are assuming the Falcon second stage can maneuver to, dock with and transfer fuel to an orbital storage facility. Currently, it can’t. Modifying it to do so is certainly possible, but at unknown cost and impact to the primary mission.

          Just storing fuel in LEO has some problems. You can’t just leave it there until needed. Station keeping to.maintain the orbit against drag is nontrivial. It is for ISS, and fuel tanks for liquid hydrogen would be more.difficult due to the lower density.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      The siren song of LH2/LOX is sweet sounding if you have an ear for “maximizing performance”. Unfortunately, if what you’re trying to minimize is cost per pound to orbit for an overall launch vehicle, then LH2/LOX may not be the best choice.

  3. P.K. Sink says:
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    Wow! Isn’t Elon going to be disappointed when he finds out that he’s been wasting all his time with his idiotic reuse scheme. 😉

  4. William Barton says:
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    With their long lead times, rocket launch contracts are like commodities futures. Sowers is trying to convince customers SpaceX will not have cheaper launches available a couple of years down the road. Kind of like a corn grower saying, “You can trust my traditional corn. My competitor’s GMO Frankenfood crops are bound to fail. Trust me. I’ve been growing corn for decades!” Hasn’t been all that long since some folks were saying SpaceX required “new physics.” E pur si muove.

  5. Daniel Woodard says:
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    are seeds sewn or sown?

  6. BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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    Well now ain’t that surprising! LOL.
    It’ll be truly satisfying when the chickens come home to roost.
    Cheers

  7. buzzlighting says:
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    George Sower Analysis of SpaceX Falcon 9 First Stage reuse he said not profitable unless its 20 or more rocket launches. Personally I totally disagree with his analysis and doesn’t know SpaceX real cost building Falcon 9 first stage,Launch Operation cost and refurbishment cost to inspect, repair and test first stage to flight readness to launch.

  8. buzzlighting says:
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    ULA staff spreading anti-usable technology to all US+World Media could back fire on them. What If Elon Musk SpaceX starts mastering reusability and recovers several Falcon 9 first stages next 2 years. It would reinforce the believe that the reuseable rocket age has started. ULA better start their own reuse rocket first stage program real soon or go out of business. I think China ,Russia and the France won’t wait for very long to develop reuse first stage program because SpaceX was first one do it successfully. Their Space Trailblazer of our time.

  9. Daniel Woodard says:
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    ULA is doing what it can. But when the Falcon booster approached the pad faster than seemed possible, and disappeared in a cloud of smoke and a boom, and we thought it had again crashed, and the smoke cleared, and someone with binoculars shouted “It’s still standing!”, in that instant everything else became obsolete.

    BTW recovery of the old Atlas II booster engines by parachute was proposed over twenty years ago, although at that time is was assumed they would have to be picked up out of the water. I’m not disparaging the ULA recovery plan for the Vulcan, but is the Vulcan really going to be pushed if RD-180s are available at a fraction of the cost?

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      No.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        Then Blue will push its own LV, which will be methane-fueled, and will have at least a little income from flying suborbital tourists. As good as the Falcon is, we need competition and reduncancy. NASA/DOD should provide some funds for developing the BE-4.

        • P.K. Sink says:
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          Blue doesn’t need the money as much as DOD needs the engine. But congress seems to want the government to own the engine in the same way it owns SLS/Orion. That ain’t gonna happen.

        • Jonna31 says:
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          I think that’s why Blue Origin is developing their own rocket as well as subcontracting on new engine development for Atlas V with the BE-4. Because they don’t want to rest their fortunes on ULA. I think for them, if Vulcan happens and BE-4 flies on that in addition to their own rocket, fantastic. If not, their own rocket will fly it anyway.

      • duheagle says:
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        Yes. Read my comment above. Vulcan is an existential necessity for ULA. In the meantime, they need enough RD-180’s to support an Atlas V launch rate that will get them through the next few years until Vulcan is flying and certified. Neither of these things is even slightly optional if ULA is still to exist five years hence.

  10. buzzlighting says:
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    Daniel Woodard nice and quick comment i didn’ think anybody would respond that fast.I Watch SpaceX Orbcomm-2 Launch December 21 2015 amazed how quickly Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the pad way more faster than CRS-7 launch because Falcon 9 v1.1 Full Thrust variant, a slightly longer rocket with upgraded and stretched fuel tanks to accommodate a new type of super-chilled Lox+RP1 made big difference performance got their satellites launch and landed the first stage booster on land. I did watch youtube videos from China and Russia about SpaceX Falcon 9 Orbcomm-2 launch and First Stage booster land landing. It seem big news in China and Russia their all seriously talking about it implications to the World Rocket Launch industries.

    • Dante80 says:
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      F9 FT lift off TWR is 1.28, while F9 v1.1 was 1.18. This made it look moving much faster when launched.

      Also, have in mind that F9 in general feels a little slower than other rockets off the pad because of its mighty thinness ratio. Most people tend to forget that this thing is actually 70m long.

  11. Anonymous says:
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    “Now that Sen. Shelby has used his Dark Side powers to enable ULA’s addiction to Russian engines to continue.”

    I’d qualify *addiction* by mentioning ULA plans use the American designed and built BE-4 for Vulcan. They presently use the American designed and built RL-10 in Centaur and DCSS, but have discussed changing to a vacuum variant of BE-3 or a piston pumped engine from XCOR. Both American designed and built.

    I assume the “Dark Side powers” refer to the 2016 omnibus language that lifts the ban on the RD-180. That bill was released on December 16th, but Dr. Sowers initial post on the Nasa Spaceflight forum dates to April of last year.

    “ULA is off using its staff to sow seeds of anti-reusable technology” I don’t think it’s fair to say ULA is anti-reuse, as their plans for Vulcan recovery and reuse of the BE-4 engines. Just because they’re of the opinion that a business case closes for partial reuse, but not full stage reuse, does not mean they are anti-reusability.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      “Just because they’re of the opinion that a business case closes for partial reuse, but not full stage reuse, does not mean they are anti-reusability”

      There’s information between the lines sometimes missed.

      • Anonymous says:
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        What information am I missing, Michael? As I missed this information between the lines and I also missed the meaning of your vague comment.

        • P.K. Sink says:
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          Michael is just channeling his inner Yoda.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Point taken, Chief.

          I meant to say that nobody knows what parts of the story are missing. We only see headlines, mostly. I should have been clear. er.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        I think the part of the story that’s missing is that SpaceX has sized Falcon 9 from the beginning with reusability in mind. The recent upgrades have enabled it to successfully land the first stage back at the launch site (at least for smaller payloads) which is a huge plus over barge landings.

        I’m not sure ULA is doing the same with Vulcan, which appears to be optimizing the vehicle for “maximum performance” (i.e. with traditional metrics much more applicable to expendables than to reusables).

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          I had in mind the series of political moves that surely occurred but are entirely opaque to mere mortals. It’s always like that because the media has so little real access to anything about all they ever know is a headline.

          I’ve seen this time and again in my world of land planning; developers will get some sort of approval after which newspapers scream just like the time mama got hit by that durn bus.

          What remains unreported is in the details of land givebacks, contributions to public projects, limited signage, dramatically reduced density, and other very costly provisions of the deal.

          Reporting that the project was approved isn’t even half the story. No doubt something similar happened with the engines.

    • P.K. Sink says:
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      Good points. I’m guessing that they’re going to move forward with Vulcan, but drag their feet. If that’s the case, it may be too little too late. Can’t wait to see the Space X price point on their first reusable offering. Someone will grab it up. Also can’t wait to watch it fly (with fingers crossed).

      • Anonymous says:
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        I’m not worried about ULA dragging its feet; I’m worried about its parents. The last I heard, Boeing & LockMart are funding Vulcan only on quarter-by-quarter basis, which does not strike me as a very enthusiastic endorsement.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Vulcan will never fly.

        • P.K. Sink says:
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          Because???

          • Yale S says:
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            ULA’s owners have been very grudgingly funding Vulcan quarter by quarter. They know that even a non-reusable Falcon is unbeatable in open competition and eating their lunch. The Vulcan, with its massive development costs, going into what ULA sees as a shrinking market being cut into ever smaller slices, and continued RD-180s going into the 2020s, is a non-starter.

            Company CEO Tory Bruno says the Vulcan’s per-unit cost will fall under $100 million (configurations will vary between 4 and 5-meter versions). Cost for the Vulcan Heavy, which will rely on the largest of the rockets, new solid-rocket boosters and be married with a new upper stage, will be under $200 million, says George Sowers, vice president of advanced programs at ULA.

            With the current out-the-door price of $61m for an F9 and FH of $90m WITHOUT reuse, then there is no case for Boeing-LM.
            Couple with competitors from India, Russia, Japan, and Blue Origin, there is no place for the Vulcan to live.

          • Todd Austin says:
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            ULA will continue to have business, even as an over-priced supplier, as the gov’t demands two different sources of launch. It’s been stated explicitly that there is willingness to single-source a contract with them to keep them going. The question will be will a third supplier come along that will undercut ULA and lose them even that small guaranteed flow of business?

            ULA needs Vulcan to compete against that potential third entrant, not against SpaceX. That is, they do as long as they’re happy with that small trickle of launches. If they want more business, then they’ll need to do better on price that Vulcan is likely to be able to achieve.

          • Yale S says:
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            Blue Origin has a real potential to be a ULA competitor for DOD business down the line.

            The problem ULA faces with Vulcan is getting the cash to build it. The feds are not offering direct funding. The market for DoD/NASA launches per year divided by 2 or 3 launch vendors (with one of them undercutting your prices by 50%) cannot support Vulcan. Remember, ULA has to do this without the $1bill/yr junk fee they are getting from DoD (which they said was necessary for their existing fleet).

            The only cash available is commercial markets:

            A monopoly since 2006, when Lockheed Martin and Boeing consolidated their Atlas V and Delta IV operations, the company has not had to compete on cost. Delta IVs are not sold commercially and Atlas Vs are only sold rarely for commercial missions.
            Bruno, however, says that is going to change. The first missions for Vulcan are likely to be commercial, he says, as the company pursues a path for certification for national security payloads.

            Good luck with that!

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            As I recall, most of the development money for Falcon/Merlin is internally funded; some COTS money was used, but part of the COTS money also went to purchasing rides on the rocket; and SpaceX developed Falcon/Merlin for around $1B which was funded internally, mostly from investors and from Mr. Musk.

            It’s an important point that I think I have right?

          • Dante80 says:
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            Not anywhere close to $1B.

            Read this. Its by NASA btw…

            https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/54
            (page40)

            +

            https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/58

          • BeanCounterFromDownUnder says:
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            Sorry, not correct. COTS funding was part SpaceX and part (majority) NASA. This funding went entirely toward developing the Dragon Cargo vehicle and two demo flights (originally going to be 3).
            None of COTS was used in developing F9 or Merlin.
            Cheers

          • Yale S says:
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            In a sorta roundabout way COTS allowed F9 to be built. SpaceX was in near collapse when the COTS contract (and money) appeared. Since cash is fungible, it provided working capital to keep SpX afloat.
            So technically COTS was dragon money, in practice it provided a liferaft for SpX generally.

          • duheagle says:
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            I believe the total development money in the COTS deal with SpaceX was $395 million.

          • Mal Peterson says:
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            Might be best not to assume those prices for F9 and FH won’t increase. Higher profitability provides more money for investing in future ambitions. Past experience is full of entrepreneurs who captured market share and then increased prices to permit investments in R&D… Big pharma comes to mind

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Or Microsoft.

          • duheagle says:
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            Elon intends to maximize total quantity of profits, not the rate of profit. He’s looking to do this by expanding the total size of the launch market. He needs some unknown minimum absolute amount of money to go to Mars. He’d prefer to make $1,000 2,000 times than make $1 million one time. Given his probable actual costs right now – see my other comments above – it’s not like he’s actually leaving money on the table anyway.

            Now, as to your alleged general principle, I’d be amazed if you can cite a “Big Pharma example.” The usual pattern is that a Big Pharma outfit comes out with a new, unique medication at an excruciating price. Other Big Pharma firms come out with additional products aimed at the same syndrome. Even though all are still on-patent, competition reduces the price both the first-mover and all the also-rans can charge. Eventually, the once-new drugs go off-patent and the generic guys come in and it all goes onto the $4/month list at Wal-Mart.

            The first Ford Model T sold for a four-figure price. The last one sold, 20 years later, for a mid-three-figure price.

            A usable configuration of the early IBM PC cost my employer close to five grand in 1982. I think you can figure out where this is going.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            See Mr. Simkin, below. He’s smart enough to cite actual reasons.

          • P.K. Sink says:
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            Wow! You guys are double-teaming me. I like the attention. (Hope that you’re feeling better.)

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Apple would be a good example. Their cost to manufacture an iPhone in China is a very small fraction of the cost to the consumer. They price their phones at what the market will tolerate. Since the demand is still relatively high for iPhones, they make a huge profit off them.

        • Russel aka 'Rusty' Shackleford says:
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          Then ULA will go out of business.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            That’s my thinking.

            As I’ve said before, much happens that is opaque, making the gathering of tea leaves sparse indeed. But ULA has shown very little interest in actually taking the space exploration football and moving it forward.

            It’s not like they didn’t know what SpaceX was doing way back when Falcon was still just lines on a page; surely everyone in the industry knew what he was doing and in some detail. It’s like a football team making the play calls available to the opposition on a realtime basis. Before ever play.

            But the death knell sounds for ULA not so much in failure to see the future; that’s a sin committed by many. ULA’s problem is cultural. Tory wants to sell antique rockets to the government. Elon wants to go to Mars. Tory sees tech as a way to make money. Elon sees tech as the keys to a dream. And a way to make money.

            Big difference.

            (OK, “antique” is over the top. Still).

          • duheagle says:
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            Substitute the name ‘Michael Gass’ for the name ‘Tory Bruno’ in your comment and I’m in more or less complete agreement. I don’t see Tory Bruno as a mere continuation of the Gass regime, though. He seems to get that ULA faces an existential crisis and appears to be doing his best to keep the lights on. Read one of my upstream comments to explore the economic reasons why. Bruno seems to give every indication of “getting it.” The suits at Boeing and LockMart who are holding the purse strings, though, seem much less flexible of mind. Long-term, Bruno’s biggest challenges are SpaceX’s Falcons and Blue Origin’s upcoming orbital launch vehicle. Near-term, his biggest obstacles seem to be the suits who are his effective superiors. If he can’t get past them, then there is no future for ULA.

  12. Phillip George says:
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    Change is coming. If ULA wants to wait – let them wait on reuse ability. Remember how long it takes to design a rocket and have an engine, test it, certify it, etc -years However, wait too long and you may find that your business is gone. Remember Delta is already dead. Look at Blackberry, they had the market and waited and waited when the Iphone came out and then android–they are now a bit player. I don’t think ULA can wait till 2025+ to start to get into reuseability. BO and SpaceX would have taken the market.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      Companies like Boeing and Lockmart will just buy a new company that is doing reuse rather then stop paying dividends to shareholders and invest in innovations.

      • P.K. Sink says:
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        Perhaps they don’t need to buy a company. It looks like Blue will give them most of what they need.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          This may help ULA in the sort term, but those engines will almost surely be marked up. Blue Origin will want to make some profit on those sales to help fund their own launch vehicle development. So, there is a long term risk that Blue Origin will eventually develop a reusable orbital vehicle which will directly compete with ULA’s Vulcan.

          • P.K. Sink says:
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            If that’s the case, it makes one wonder why they’re making the AR1 play second fiddle to the Vulcan. Maybe they’re hoping the government will fund it’s development, and then they can step in and use it. That does sound like classic ULA. And it appears that congress may be down with that scheme too.

  13. TMA2050 says:
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    I was pleasantly surprised that Elon got off a successful launch before the end of the year. Add the fact that it was an upgraded v1.1FT and he got his 1st stage back as well tells me he’s got a lot of magic left in him.

    If SpaceX ever goes public..

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      I’d prefer they not go public. SpaceX is investing a lot of money towards what amounts to very long term goals. In my opinion, taking the company public would mean investors would expect a much faster return on investment than what Musk currently expects. In fact, I’d expect Musk to keep the company private as long as possible because of this.

      • Todd Austin says:
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        He has stated that he would go public only when flights to Mars are regular.

        If you want to invest in SpaceX, you can get a *small* piece of the action through 5 funds that Fidelity manages that hold some SpaceX stock. Google to find out what they are, I’ve forgotten 🙂

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Elon has made it clear that he will not go public with SpaceX stock until flights to Mars become routine.
      If it works out that way, he’ll be the richest Martian for a long time.

  14. Steve Harrington says:
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    The most valuable aspect of stage recovery at this point is the ability to check for damage and wear. Reuse means additional data can be recorded without telemetry limitations and analyzed. Future stages can be improved or cost reduced based on this analysis.

    • fcrary says:
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      Now that you mention it, there are almost certainly places where launch vehicles are over-engineered. If there is uncertainty in how much stress a part will be under, large performance margins are added for reliability. Post-use inspection can definitely reduce those uncertainties and therefore margins. But I wouldn’t want to push that too far or too quickly.

      • rktsci says:
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        You often have a good idea where you are over-engineered and can add sensors to confirm that data. (“development test instrumentation”) You then can make refinements and improve performance – the Shuttle and Atlas did that. Don’t know about Delta.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      That brings up and interesting thought that I hadn’t considered. SpaceX can compare their detailed telemetry from the hold-down test firing they are preparing to do, and compare that with telemetry from the earlier pre-flight hold-down test firing and the from the flight itself. That would zero in on a lot of specific problems to look for that would get in the way of reusability and they can start solving for future new rockets that they build. Then they totally disassemble the next recovered stage and inspect it and they come out with everything to look for in system improvements and refurbishment targets for quick turn-arounds.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Also, inspection at least gives you a chance to discover parts that are not as robust as they could be. With expendables, you could have parts on the edge of failure but would not know since all flown parts are either at the bottom of the ocean or in shallow craters on the ground.

      • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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        Or parts that are over-engineered with more mass than necessary.

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          While true, one of the reasons that traditional aerospace structures are so expensive is excessive mass scrubbing. After too much mass scrubbing, you can pass the point of diminishing returns and end up with lighter, but far more expensive piece of hardware. This sort of philosophy originally came from designing missiles and ICBMs which were the basis of the first orbital launch vehicles. The cost to manufacture an ICBM is not as big of an issue compared to the cost of storing (silo) and transporting it (nuclear submarine) so minimizing the size and mass becomes one of the top priorities.

          But for launch vehicles, minimizing the size and mass of the vehicle makes little sense. You want to minimize the cost to manufacture the vehicle. For a launch vehicle, deliberately oversizing the design like SpaceX has done with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy minimizes development costs (less design iterations focused on mass scrubbing) and quite possibly manufacturing costs as well.

          • Mal Peterson says:
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            Jeff: To the best of my knowledge, the cost comparisons are skewed because Space-X and ULA/Boeing/LMSC are playing with different accounting rules. The ULA gang is using the cost accounting standards required by the USG for contractors who have both cost-reimbursement and fixed price efforts in their operations. What that means practically is that any uncompensated overtime is burdened — using direct labor hours — with overheads, G&A, etc. spread across both commensurately.

            Space-X is a fixed price outfit. Based on published stories, their workforce strategy allows them to utilize a great deal of overtime without having to pay for it in direct compensation. Their labor mix is geared to minimize OT. (Engineers are awarded stock rights and those are worth something, but there are some vesting issues). Helpful to read the recent biography of Elon Musk to get an appreciation of how he has used this entreprenurial startup approach to keep his costs down.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            I’m sure that is a lot of it. Where I work, it’s more like SpaceX than ULA. We sell our end (software) product to companies and some government agencies, but generally don’t do any government contract work.

            This sort of thing is the basis argument for “commercial off the shelf” types of procurement. Free the companies from oppressive government oversight and its overhead and let them compete to sell products to the government instead of an expensive single source development program. This is the foundation of the current “commercial cargo” and “commercial crew” programs that each have two suppliers and are being run for far less money than a traditional single source government contracted program would have cost the government.

          • Mal Peterson says:
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            For human space flight and high dollar/critical government missions, the government has to mitigate the risks that a supplier will let P&L calculations affect its compliance with best practices or obtain materials, hardware, or/software from uncertified vendors. There are simply too many cases of such that led to loss of payload or close calls. This includes the recent Space-X failure due to reliance on the statements of the supplier of the failed strut.

  15. John Adley says:
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    The key question to reusability is reliability. This is the question no one knows the answer because no rocket engine has been designed to use more than once. Reusable rockets with a high failing rate may still be viable for some applications such as launching cheap payloads that can be mass produced. For things like JWST which costs billions and decades to build, reliability is the only thing that matters, cost is not even in the equation. This means most NASA science missions probably won’t fly on reusable rockets for a long time.

    • fcrary says:
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      There are a large number of rocket engines designed to be used more than once. The RL-10 has multiple firing capability and the R-4D on Cassini has been used many times. They printed up some T-shirts for the 100th orbital trim maneuver and mine is wearing out. But you mean either high-thrust first stage engines, or engines people have had a chance to recover and take apart. In that respect, you’re right except for the SSMEs, and I’m not sure if I’d really call that reusable in the sense we’re discussing. More like rebuildable. I also agree that reliability, ease of recycling, and the cycle lifetime are the big unknowns, and the area where we simply don’t have much data.

      As far as NASA science missions using a reused Falcon stage, you’re almost certainly right for class A missions. But class B and lower science missions are, at least in theory, possible and might be a different matter.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        While liquid fueled rocket engines have not been flown on orbital launch vehicles multiple times (aside from the SSME), they certainly have been tested on the ground multiple times. Here is a cite which includes testing an F-1 engine multiple times.

        http://history.nasa.gov/SP-

      • Yale S says:
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        Any time NASA or DOD or a commercial customer demands a virgin rocket it is a major win for SpaceX. They get someone to pay full retail and then get a free rocket to resell however many times. $$$$$$$$$

    • jamesmuncy says:
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      “No rocket engine has been designed to use more than once”? Really, so the LOX-Kerosene engine that XCOR flew in the X-racer and refueled and flew again SEVEN TIMES in one day must not have existed.

      Hell, even the SSMEs flew w/o major overhaul when they didn’t have to operate at 107+%. I’m hardly a Shuttle-hugger.

      And your analysis of reliability is equally flawed. reusable rockets don’t have a high failing rate… because then they wouldn’t be reusable. A first stage that has worked 5 times, and flown within envelope, is much more likely to do so than a copy the first time out.

      SpaceX and ULA are taking different financial and technical approaches to the ultimate goal: more affordable — and still reliable — access to space. The market will decide.

      • John Adley says:
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        apparently I am not an engineer and never heard of any of the things you talked about. If you can name any rocket engine that can fly as many time as an airplane I will call it reliable, otherwise who cares 1 or 5 times? I never say spacex’s toy is useless, and musk is known to be market savvy, all I am saying is it is too early to be too excited.

        • Paul451 says:
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          You said something stupid and demonstrably wrong, stop pretending you didn’t and just admit you don’t know what you are talking about.

          You said: “no rocket engine has been designed to use more than once.”

          Not: “can fly as many time as an airplane”.

          • John Adley says:
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            OK, I don’t usually argue for the sake of arguing, but let’s try. The whole conversation is about whether or not there is a reusable age around the corner, my answer is no one knowns. Yes, I said no engine was DESIGNED to use more than once, and you need to define what used mean before you can even argue about it. It can be fired once, or run the full cycle of launching from earth and back to earth again. In the context of this conversation what is the correct definition? Has anyone DESIGNED a engine that is meant to be used as an airplane engine, which can fly thousands of hours without the need to overhauling? Sorry, I have seen one yet.

            When you talk about stupidity, you need to understand what it is. If is not how well you can google, it is how well your brain can function. You haven’t show if you have a brain yet, maybe it is wise not to point fingers?

          • Yale S says:
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            Look up the RD-170 for example. It was designed for 10 launches but the Russians after a launch test later decided it could take 20+ cycles.

          • Paul451 says:
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            Even Merlin is static fired at least once individually to test it after it’s built. Then static fired again horizontally after assembly into the 9-stack. Then short-fired vertically on the launch pad, after integration. Then fired for launch. Then fired for boost-back, then fired again for entry deceleration, then fired for landing.

            So minimum seven times for a single flight.

            And they’ve apparently been test fired dozens of times with little or no problems. As has BE-2 & 3.

            So I’d say they have been “designed” for more than one use, yes?

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            Look Einstein, early jet engines had to be torn down and rebuilt after very few running hours, yet the military did not shy away from them because they met requirements that piston driven engines could not.

            I’d argue that with liquid fueled rocket engines, we’re still at a similar early point in history because of lack of investment in reusable vehicles. The SSME and other engines on test stands have proven time and again that engines are *not* the limiting factor in number of vehicle flights.

          • Paul451 says:
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            early jet engines had to be torn down and rebuilt after very few running hours

            AIUI, they were required by the rules to be torn down for maintenance after a few running hours. But the engineers were surprised to discover that the rate of wear was less than for ICE-props, and the rules were gradually relaxed as confidence in jets grew. Turbines turned out to be much lower maintenance. (To the point where you use turbines to power props/rotors rather than an ICE if you can afford the higher purchase price.)

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            In other words, the rules were cautious because there simply was little to no experience with jet engines. As experience grew, the rules were relaxed based on the data gathered. But I’m also sure at least some (potential) problems were found early on that were addressed via hardware changes.

            The very same sort of thing will need to happen with liquid fueled rocket engines.

          • Monty says:
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            Falcon’s Merlin 1D engines are designed for multiple firings, and are fired multiple times — in testing, in the static fire test, and then in the launch. (And now in post launch, with the returned core!) Nearly every rocket engine must survive being test fired at least once before being fired during a mission, so what you just said is complete nonsense. And I’m not even getting into aerospike-type engines (like those on the canceled X-33) that were expressly designed and tested in multiple-use scenarios.

            Second stage engines are as a matter of course “used” several times during their boost phases to GEO or transfer orbits, often with long dwell times in between.

          • Russel aka 'Rusty' Shackleford says:
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            You called him on it and he is moving the goalposts.

        • fcrary says:
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          Well, It’s only a 200 N engine, but I did mention Cassini’s R-4D. The spacecraft did OTM-435 last week. Admittedly, half of the OTMs are usually canceled (as unnecessary) and a fair fraction are done with RCS thrusters. On the other hand, the 435 doesn’t count the major burns and trajectory corrections on the way. So 100 cycles might not be an unreasonable estimate. I can guarantee there has been no maintenance at all since Cassini was launched in 1997.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Liquid fueled rocket engines are by their very nature reusable (once any single use components like igniters are replaced). In fact, the specs for many engines are written to require multiple firings of full (mission) duration. This is to speed development and to insure that there is a safety margin on flight engines that may only be fired once (or twice if the engine is tested before flight).

      • John Adley says:
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        Liquid fueled engines are around for almost a century now, and they are so simple even cavemen (North Koreans) can do it, then why the “reusable age” is just “around the corner”?

        • Jeff2Space says:
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          The short answer is that designing and flying a reusable launch vehicles is a different, and far more difficult, problem to solve than designing and firing a reusable liquid fueled rocket engine.

        • Yale S says:
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          Most rockets were designed to carry a weapon to a target.

          • Jeff2Space says:
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            And even for launch vehicles which never carried a weapon, most were designed by the very same people who used to design missiles. Because of this the emphasis was on minimizing the dry mass to wet mass ratio, maximizing the ISP of the engines, and etc.

            Unfortunately, it appears that little thought was given to actually minimizing launch costs or the cost per kg of payload to LEO, which are the metrics which truly needed to be optimized to compete in the global launch market.

            Things that are different just aren’t the same. Applying missile design rules to launch vehicles will not result in an optimal design from an economic point of view.

        • Dante80 says:
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          There are a number of reasons for that.

          One of them is the simple fact that you need to bring the engine safely back down to land to re-use it again. Expendable LVs cannot do that.

          The biggest problem in re-usable LVs is the economics. Engine re-usability is actually one of the smallest problems really.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Actually while many do understand how to design and build high-performance rocket engines, the engines are by no means simple. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they are deceptively simple.

          At least in that regard the North Koreans aren’t cave men. They are rocket scientists.

  16. RJ says:
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    Again…SpaceX has hardware and is flying. Boeing….vaporware!

  17. Paul451 says:
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    Sower’s “analysis” turned out to be garbage. He created a model that was over-sensitive to two variables. One that demonstrably isn’t at all sensitive IRL, and the other that he didn’t know.

    For example, just a 10% change in maximum payload changes his prediction of “payback time” from 5 flights to 90 flights. In spite of SpaceX doing routine flyback attempts (with a theoretical payload reduction) without affecting any customers except GSO payloads.

    The other oversensitive variable was the proportion of total launch costs that weren’t the manufacture of the first stage. Which Sower doesn’t know and just guesses. In spite of the fact that a single point either side can double or half his “payback” number.

    GIGO.

    • numbers_guy101 says:
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      I see the same issues. An especially questionable assumption in the model is Sowers performance ratio (Pe/Pr) between expendable and reusable. Change it to 1.1 for example – reusae is now good even after just a few launches. At a value of 2.0 this factor carries a hidden assumption that unused payload is a big loss to someone – being inefficient.

      More broadly, this Pe/Pr effect is not strong (or perhaps even a factor at all) for a customer that is quite happy using less payload, if only because their payload is smaller (and less expensive), while still paying less total in take away price versus the next launch provider.

      Think of this like the story about the two guys running away from the bear, where one of them takes off his shoes. The one guy says to the other – that won’t help you outrun the bear! The guy says – I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you!

      • Yale S says:
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        Sower’s “Performance Ratio” is bogus. The Falcon 9 (and soon the FH) are (deliberately) oversized for their targeted payloads. The extra capability (earmarked for recovery) is outside of the equation.
        SpaceX isn’t suddenly telling customers that their satellites must be smaller. The baseline payload is staying the same (actually increasing) so they see no hit. From SpX’s side, they are only burning some extra 10’s of thousand dollars of fuel (chump change) and getting to reuse a $40mill+ booster and charge millions of bucks to each of the next customers.
        Plus… If NASA or DOD requires a virgin booster, then they pay for the rocket full price and SpaceX gets a free recovered booster! Pure profit…

        With this dude doing their thinking, no wonder ULA is cratering.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          The Sower piece is so obviously full of holes that one wonders what the hell ULA is doing. I see a couple of alternatives:
          1. That Sower posted it in the spirit of peer review, and in that spirit problems are now revealed;
          2. That Sower posted it to poison the jury- that is, to turn public opinion;
          3. That Sower posted it to poison a different and somewhat more gullible jury- the Congress;
          4. That ULA is actually making decisions based on this and similar analyses.
          5. That Sowers and Tory and the other ULA execs are just bullies in the schoolyard reacting in a predictable way when the kids no longer pick them for tetherball.

          I suppose #1 is most charitable. I don’t see an alternative that makes ULA look like anything but a chump.

          On the other hand, given the creationist leanings of many in congress these days including those sitting on various science-related committees as examples of current congressional quality, get ready for a congressman to cite the Sowers piece at some point.

          I don’t like to assign motivation to people I don’t know and when there’s no evidence, but this one is a head scratcher.

          • Yale S says:
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            In as much as Musk is gonna do, what Musk is gonna do, Sowers can’t influence SpaceX reuse plans. So it must either be to rationalize to themselves why they are failing, and/or to assuage congressional critics who complain about ULA hypercosts.

        • Ball Peen Hammer ✓ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ says:
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          “SpaceX isn’t suddenly telling customers that their satellites must be smaller.”

          I’ve been saying this for years now. Critics complain that reuse reduces payload capacity, but it doesn’t really.

          The F9 is designed to deliver a specific payload capacity and be reused. The fact that the main component used to make the F9 reusable (propellant) can also be used to increase capacity in single use flights is just icing on the cake that is only possible with this re-use method. The Space Shuttle didn’t have the practical ability to increase payload capacity by burning its wings for an extra boost.

          • Yale S says:
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            By conservatively rating their payload capacity from the start, SpaceX built in the reserve for reuse. And as you point out, that gives them added value of extra payload in the expendable mode.

          • Paul F. Dietz says:
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            It also increases the resilience of the launch system. In the event of certain engine failures, they have extra propellant available to complete the primary mission (even if that means not recovering the first stage).

          • Bill Housley says:
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            ULA says that the Atlas has excess capacity too. They use it to widen their launch window. I don’t know if it is enough excess capacity for a retro burn and landing…or if the rocket is even designed to survive such a manuver.

        • Bill Housley says:
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          And…the brand new throwaway Falcon’s are still priced to transform the industry anyway. They have plenty of room to raise the price a little if they have to when they find what they have to toughen up for reusability.

      • buzzlighting says:
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        Number_guy101 thank you responding my comment I made 2 day ago about same George Sowers analysis. Very nice good comment you made, thank again.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Also, part of the stated purpose to the 30% thrust increase and the fuel cryo upgrade was to enable 1st stage recovery for GTO flights. Burning more fuel means a lighter rocket and an easier return flight and landing. Win.
      Also, any cost savings at all, anywhere, in any amount, on SpaceX’s part further increases ULA’s pain. It doesn’t have to be huge.
      More sour-grapes whining about by ULA just makes it worse and focuses the damage to their market share when/if they turn out to be wrong. It’ll either look like they knew they were wrong and lied, or claimed to know rockets better than SpaceX and lied, or that they are just totally clueless about rocket economics and honestly didn’t know they were clueless.
      We saw this sort of thing in the desktop computer revolution back in the 80s and 90s. Much better to acknowledge innovation and admit that your planning to do it too than to just shake your hand at it and call the innovators stupid. The graveyards of history are strewn with the bones of tech companies that did that.

  18. Yale S says:
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    Elon Musk’s success in launching reusable space rockets means Russia must make its own projects cheaper as the cash-strapped country struggles to retain its share of the market, the country’s defense-industry chief said.

    “The main goal today is to make space cheap,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who’s in charge of defense, told Rossiya 24 TV in an interview on Wednesday in Moscow. “Competitors are stepping on our toes. Look at what billionaire Musk is doing with his projects. This is very interesting, well done, and we treat this work with respect.”

    http://www.bloomberg.com/ne

    I suggest to Rogozin that Russia starts investing in large trampolines.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      I suggest to ULA that they learn from Russia’s reaction to this, stop the whining, holier-than-thou attitude and acknowledge an advancing industry.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Russia will be a SpaceX customer some day…provided they don’t earn themselves a place on the U.S. rocket industry’s no-fly list with Iran.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Never happen.

        The Russians are correctly proud of an enviable history, one that enabled the Chinese and others. Mr. Putin has made it clear that he intends to restore Russia as a world leader; perhaps recent moves are intended to move in that direction.

        The only thing slowing him is the oil crash (which could be permanent if certain world leaders would use the pause to enable alternatives- nah, won’t happen).

        • Yale S says:
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          I agree that Russian payloads will fly on Russian rockets. That is similar to Ariane in Europe where there are restrictions on foreign boosters.

          • fcrary says:
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            Cluster 2 and Mars Express launched on Russian launch vehicles. The former is something of an unspoken vote of (limited) confidence, since the original Cluster failed to launch on the first Ariane 5 flight. But I agree there is a strong tendency to use locally-supplied launch services.

          • Yale S says:
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            I didn’t mean to imply that zero European payloads fly on Russian vehicles. As a said “there are restrictions”, not “prohibitions”. In fact many payloads fly on the Europeanized (sp?) Soyuz down near the equator at the Guiana Space Centre (GSC)

            8. The Parties hereto will take the ESA developed launchers and the Soyuz launcher operated from the CSG into account when defining and executing their national programmes as well as the European and other international programmes in which they are involved, except where such use compared to the use of other launchers or space transport means available at the envisaged time presents an unreasonable disadvantage with regard to cost, reliability or mission suitability. Preference to their utilisation shall be granted by the Parties in the following order of priority:
            – ESA developed launchers,
            – the Soyuz launcher operated from the CSG when comparing the options to launch missions by non ESA-developed launchers,
            – other launchers

        • duheagle says:
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          The only thing slowing him is the oil crash (which could be permanent if
          certain world leaders would use the pause to enable alternatives- nah,
          won’t happen).

          Response to first point: “How do you think having your right leg blown off will affect your future plans to run in the Novosibirsk Marathon Mr. Putin?”

          Response to second point: There are no real alternatives except more nuclear reactors. The pretend alternatives, wind and solar, weren’t competitive with $100/barrel oil. They certainly aren’t going to suddenly magically become competitive with $40/barrel oil.

          • Paul F. Dietz says:
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            Nuclear has very little to do with displacing oil. Nuclear is used to generate electricity, and lack/price of electricity is not what is holding back electric vehicles. Very little oil is used to generate electricity.

            As for the competition of nuclear with solar/wind for generation of electricity, nuclear has experienced a horrific flat learning curve, unlike the renewables. Nuclear reactors are not being built in places where free competition with the renewables is allowed to occur because they simply cannot compete economically. This will only become more true as the renewables continue their march down the learning curve. Nuclear’s time has passed. It will soon join buggywhips in the museum of paleotechnology.

          • duheagle says:
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            Very little oil is used to generate electricity.

            True, but irrelevant. The proponents of wind and solar are aiming to displace refined hydrocarbons in transport applications. That is certainly the plainly stated goal of perhaps the number one solar power cheerleader in the U.S., Elon Musk.

            nuclear has experienced a horrific flat learning curve

            Untrue. The utilities that operate current reactors have increased the average percentage of total capacity at which they can operate their facilities. Research on new, inherently safe reactor designs has continued all during the quarter-century interregnum in new U.S. nuke plant construction. It is problematical whether any of these advanced designs will soon see service, but that is owing to the one area of nuclear energy infrastructure in which a flat learning curve is readily apparent, and that is the federal regulatory apparatus that is still stuck in 1979.

            Your claims about the relative economics of nuclear vs. renewable energy are laughable. Nuclear power is a continuously available baseload generation technology. Wind and solar are variable and unpredictable electrical generation sources requiring expensive “peaking” generators – usually gas-fired – or some form of energy storage to smooth out their wobbly supply side. Peaking generators are expensive relative to equivalent baseload capacity and a suitably economical storage technology does not yet exist. Elon is counting on lots and lots of big-ass lithium ion battery packs to provide uninterrupted service to his network of electric car charging stations, but the cost per continuously available kilowatt hour is still insanely higher than nuclear, coal or gas-fired baseload generation facilities.

            For other places where the total cost of renewables has proven ruinously high and service levels have descended to near third-world levels, try Germany and Spain. Both are now scrambling to buy nuclear-generated electricity from the one European country that managed to keep its energy sector out from under the malignant influence of the neo-Druid parties that are significant political forces elsewhere on the Continent – France.

          • Paul F. Dietz says:
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            Your post is rife with errors and shoddy thinking.

            First, I was talking about the learning curve for construction of reactors, not their operation. This curve has been essentially flat, if not rising. The curves for wind and solar, in contrast, have show sustained declines in cost. The cost of photovoltaic modules, for example, have declined by about 20% for each doubling of production. This decline shows no sign of ending, and it spells a death knell for nuclear. If nuclear is having trouble competing now, it will be massively uncompetitive in only a few years.

            Secondly, you criticize renewables for needing storage, while at the same time proposing nuclear as a means to displace oil. This is completely inconsistent, since replacing oil means replacing oil in transportation, where most of it is used, and that means either much cheaper batteries (which is likely to happen) or production of synfuels (which is less likely, but would also operate as a means of energy storage that would smooth over supply irregularities.) You can’t hold both those positions at the same time.

            BTW, we are very close to the point where batteries displace peaking gas powerplants on the grid. Eos Energy Storage’s zinc-air system is aimed at this market among others.

            The claim of relative economics is not laughable. It’s born out now in the actual stats on where utilities are spending their money when competitive bids are entertained. I don’t think you realize just how much wind and PV costs have declined, especially for PV in the last few years. Germany has seen more expensive electricity prices due to their early push for PV, but that’s because they knowingly accepted that in order to drive PV down the learning curve. This act of global charity on their part, which they have paid a lot for, has been stunningly successful.

          • Yale S says:
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            Name a new merchant nuclear plant.

            BTW, the levelized cost (per USDOE EIA 2015) for new nuclear generation is in barrel of oil equivalence is $154 per barrel oil.
            There is zero market for nuclear energy in non-centralized economies.

          • duheagle says:
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            I don’t know the name of the plant, but the TVA is building a new one and it might even be on-line by now. There are at least four more under construction in the U.S. and licenses have been issued for two dozen more beyond that. If all of these facilities come on-line in the next decade they will barely make up for the ongoing retirement of 60’s and 70’s-era nuke plants that are reaching the ends of their service lives and being decommissioned.

          • Yale S says:
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            TVA does not (by definition) build merchant plants. It is a government centralized economy agency. also, they are not building, they are completing a mostly done reactor that was halted decades ago (and at a ruinious and ever skyrocketing cost).
            Of the 4 under construction, they are heading for disaster with overwhelming delays and cost overruns.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Companies from EU countries and Russia will buy at least a launch or two from a U.S. company eventually. This upcoming tech surge will make the U.S. the world leaders in space launch like never before and that will cause situations that will, from time to time at least, necessitate adjustment.

    • Arthur Hamilton says:
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      Russia has pride in their national space program. That’s why the Soyuz system(booster, crew capsule & freighter) has been continuously developed from inception. They have the only freighter capable of refueling vehicles in space. Hence, their trampolines.

      • Yale S says:
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        In an interesting variation on the “learning curve”, the Russians are on a “forgetting curve”, where each recent development is less reliable and more expensive than its predecessor.

  19. Yale S says:
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    Sooty, but in good shape. Interesting that it is clean where the legs were folded and over the icy LOX tanks, That implies that the sooting did not occur during the terminal moments of the landing.

    http://spacenews.com/wp-con

    • Bill Housley says:
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      No, it was during supersponic retro burn. I read somewhere that that is actually one of the most difficult things to prove you can do…and they’ve done it several times already. Big difference from the Blue Origin flight.
      Interesting that they didn’t crisp anything important during it.

      • Anonymous says:
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        You don’t think Blue’s retro burn was supersonic?

        • Skinny_Lu says:
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          I believe the Blue Origin’s rocket flew straight up, released a capsule, topped out in altitude around 62 miles up. At the top of the trip, the velocity was zero. It then fell back to land vertically without ever changing attitude (always pointed upwards away from the ground) Certainly no supersonic retro burn was involved. Sure, it had to maintain attitude and aim for the landing spot, perform a terminal maneuver to “apply the brakes”, flare out and touch down softly on the ground. Sure, there is some skill required for that. Yes, they did accomplish a neat technological milestone for a new space company. However, it falls well short (an order of magnitude?) of what SpaceX did.

          • Anonymous says:
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            So does Blue’s engine relight during descent not count as a retrograde burn? Perhaps I’ve been using a sloppy definition of the term. I figured it was a retrograde burn because it was thrusting in the opposite direction of the vehicle’s velocity vector.

          • Skinny_Lu says:
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            Hmm. If I use your definition, I guess it could be considered retrograde. But, to really differentiate between the two, we should have underscored the qualifier “supersonic”. SpaceX booster is going “supersonic” but also flying in very very thin air, almost a vacuum. F9 uses its Reaction Control System to flip over the stage to point the nozzles in the flight direction. When the engines fire again in the retrograde burn, they steer the rocket back towards the Cape. Then, it flips back over to point the engines towards the ground, while maintaining attitude and keeping the nozzles pointed down towards the ground. At this point, the grid fins start to feel the air thicken and they become more effective thus replacing the RCS used for steering in vacuum. Now, the engines are pointed down and guidance just keeps adjusting towards the target. At some point(s), a subset of the nine engines fire to slow down until the final burst of thrust just as it “flares” on touch down. A beautiful sight, it was!

          • duheagle says:
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            Not quite right. The F9 1st stage does three burns post-MECO, not two. See my comment replying to another of Chief Galen Tyrol’s comments above.

          • Skinny_Lu says:
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            Yes. I stand corrected. I just tried to list the complex maneuvering the F9 booster does, yet I fell short… Ha! My point was the Blue Origin flight is child’s play in comparison. Thanks for your contribution.

        • duheagle says:
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          You don’t think Blue’s retro burn was supersonic?

          I don’t know. I can’t find any detailed description of the New Shepard’s flight profile.

          Also, a terminology quibble. The Falcon 9 1st stage does three burns on its way to landing. The first of these is a retro burn in the literal sense of “retro” – i.e., backward. At MECO the F9 1st stage is going hell for leather away from its launch site and needs to flip and do a burn, while it is still above essentially all the Earth’s atmosphere, that will get it going back toward its launch site. As the New Shepard basically just goes up and down, there is no comparable retro burn required. Any modest translation required on descent can easily be provided by the New Shepard’s numerous attitude control thrusters and aerodynamic control surfaces.

          The F9 1st stage’s second post-MECO burn is a hypersonic re-entry burn. This deploys a protective plume of engine exhaust gases around the re-entering 1st stage and scrubs off much of its velocity.

          The New Shepard might do such a burn, but I can find no conformation of this. If you have any solid info on this point, please share. I’m definitely interested.

          Given that the New Shepard is going at about the same Mach 3+ velocity as, say SpaceShipOne was on its X-Prize flights, the re-entry heating it is subjected to even if it does no re-entry burn – as SpaceShipOne did not – is not terribly severe or long-lasting. A strictly ballistic re-entry is also sufficient, as SpaceShipOne demonstgrated, to scrub off most of the vehicle’s velocity.

          SpaceShipOne employed some sort of ablative coating on its nose and sacrificed a bit of paint on re-entry. Perhaps the modest scorching visible on the base of New Shepard after landing is that craft’s equivalent. Given that New Shepard employs a LOX-LH2 engine, the one thing we can pretty confidently assume about the blackish stuff at the base of the beast upon landing is that it’s not engine soot.

          Bottom line? The only burn we can be sure the New Shepard does is the terminal landing burn that ends at touchdown. Maybe it also does another burn high up, but I can find nothing to verify this and, in light of past suborbital vehicle experience, it would not seem to be absolutely required.

          • Anonymous says:
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            Thanks for your thorough analysis. I don’t have any more information than you, so near as I can tell, New Shepard only performs a single burn during descent. Which I guess I’ll start calling a braking or descent burn instead of retro burn.

        • Bill Housley says:
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          My understanding is that there wasn’t a retro burn at all. Am I incorrect?
          Landing deceleration burn yes, retro burn no because the flight path was verticle.
          Falcon acels past supersonic, seperated, then the booster swaps ends and decels with a retro burn.
          I like being wrong, I learn something every time. Am I?

          • Anonymous says:
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            I think you’re correct and I’m the one who was mistaken about the nomenclature. I’ll call New Shepard’s second burn a braking or descent burn, not retro. My mistake.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            It was pretty cool to watch anyway. I liked the big fins they deployed at the top of the stack to help air brake and stabilize the decent. Beautiful paint job too and burning straight hydrogen/Ox in the engine means not blackening the paint with soot when the rocket is backing through its own jetwash like the kerosene burning Falcon. 😉

          • duheagle says:
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            SpaceX has Blue beat by a long way in the complexity and strenuousness of its re-entry profile, but I gotta say Blue is way ahead on cool paintjobs. I love the big feather.

  20. Bill Housley says:
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    Considering that SpaceX’s $1K / pound target price is already starving ULA of almost all of their competitively bid contracts (and costing ESA lots of money as they subsidize Ariane to keep up), ANY additional price drop caused by reuse of the first stage, including $0, still puts ULA in difficult circumstances well before they start launching Vulcan. If they can lower it even further to around $800, that price point makes its own market where ULA has never flown. $500 is probably to crazy to even discuss.

  21. David_McEwen says:
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    I give credit to Sowers for putting the details of his parametric analysis out there for inspection. Honestly, now that the analysis and spreadsheet are in the wild, so to speak, it’s essentially become open sourced and can now evolve and be improved upon. In a way, Sowers has made a strategically good move. If the larger technical community can show how to improve the reuse model and thereby make a solid analytic case for reuse, then ULA (and every other rocket maker) can point to the good work and use it as part of a justification to adopt a reuse strategy.

  22. Jonna31 says:
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    Man… the horse dung is strong with this one.

    I haven’t seen others point it out yet, but there is a central, really glaring, weaselly thing that this joker did in his “analysis”. He says, up front, he isn’t talking about a SpaceX booster or a ULA booster, just some kind of abstract booster. This abstract booster he concots, however, is basically the Atlas V in design. How do we know this? The comparative cost of the first stage versus second stage (and cost savings in re-usability) in this abstract booster. It is very different for Atlas V versus Falcon 9, and a key reason behind the viability of Falcon’s re-usability.

    The Atlas V’s first stage has 860,000 lbf of thrust for as 253 second burn. The RD-180 is valued at $25 million (very expensive). The Falcon 9 v 1.1 first stage has 1,323,000 l bfof thrust for 180 seconds. The Falcon 9 first stage has 9 Merlin 1D engines that were quoted at about a million dollars a peice.The Falcon 9 first stage does a much larger share of the “work” of getting something to orbit than the Atlas V’s first stage (at a lower cost). So already you get more performance per dollar, in just the first stage.

    This allows the Falcon 9 to have an upper stage that has to do less to boost the payload to orbit. The single Merlin 1-D ($1 million), has a mere 180,000 lbr and burns for 375s.

    Because the Atlas V’s first stage is less powerful compared to the Falcon 9’s, it requires a more substantial second stage. The Centaur’s RL10A (22,300 lbf) burns for a whopping 842 seconds. The RL10’s cost? A hilarious $38 million.

    So when SpaceX dumps their second stage, they’re dumping a very cheap stage that contributes less because Falcon 9’s first stage does a larger share of the work, compared to Atlas V, which has more of a balance between first and second stage contribution. Performance per dollar is much higher in Falcon 9’s first stage than Atlas V’s.

    Furthermore that Atlas V second stage is expensive. When SpaceX tosses it’s second stage, it’s throwing away less money than ULA, whose Atlas V has it’s cost-performance more evenly distributed between the stages. This implies that, for re-usability to be cost effective, you want to put as much performance in the first stage so that the second stage is cheap and does as little as possible. Just that extra little push, as it were.

    I mean, technically he’s right I suppose… if your abstract rocket first stage is comparatively underpowered and your second stage has to pick up the slack and is expensive as a result. You know. Just like Atlas V and Vulcan. That’s the irony. His “conceptualized reusable rocket” is basically describing the Atlas V performance-per-dollar-per-stage and say that the entire endeavour isn’t cost effective because of that. That’s absurd. It pins the entire affair to a bad assumption, that the reusable first stage shouldn’t do a larger share of the work… you know… exactly as SpaceX has done.

    Basically, he painted the picture why even Vulcan is a bad idea and if ULA wants to stay relevant, it needs to go back to square one and make an all new rocket, rather than holding onto the expensive Centaur upper stage.

    Dark Side of the Force? The Sith made more compelling arguments than this joker. There were kernels of truth in what the Jedi and Republic had become. There is absolutely no kernel of truth in this analysis… not unless this guy is looking to continue to justify the world of the $25-$38 million rocket engine for an EELV-class vehicle.

    • buzzlighting says:
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      JonathanN3 great through analysis of George Sowers analysis reuse first stage booster. I am surprised by your guess based on Atlas V first stage booster than SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster seem dishonest analysis by George Sower. Thank You for full detail lengthy explanation of Atlas V and Falcon 9 first stage rocket booster reuse compare difference in cost. Wow shocked by the price gap between Atlas V and Falcon 9 Rockets economy of scale.

    • Dante80 says:
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      Your conclusion is right, but most of the analysis is wrong. The reason you are right is because Dr. Sowers assumes a 60/40 S1/S2 cost breakdown (the proposed Vulcan model) as the model for his analysis. The F9 works on a 75/25 cost breakdown. This is huge concerning the way his equation works down the line.

      Here are some tidbits about things you got wrong.

      1. RL-10 does not cost 38$ a piece. Those quoted prices were “crisis” numbers from when PWR heard that Constellation got cancelled. ULA actually got a pretty sweet deal on sub-contracting RL-10s for the block buy. This is proprietary information though.
      2. In Falcon 9, the second stage does a lot more work than you presume. That is one of the – many – reasons it has such a big engine, and why it is so heavy compared to other second stages. And the reason that it has to do a lot more work, is simply because it needs to, since S1 has to come down sooner and do a DPL or RTLS.
      3. Dr Sowers is trying to compare different re-usability techniques for the same LV. This is not a direct comparison between Vulcan and F9 architectures. And – if you think about it – Vulcan cannot do full stage recovery anyway (too much minimum throttle thrust in S1 for being able to land propulsively).

      Lastly, Dr Sowers is not a joker (he is actually a pretty cool guy). He is wrong in this though.

      • richard_schumacher says:
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        “too much minimum throttle thrust in S1 for being able to land propulsively”. Is that really true? The engine does not have to be throttled down such that thrust = stage weight; it just requires very careful timing. (In the extreme case a single correctly-sized impulse at zero height would yield zero velocity, but it would be infeasible to either deliver such an impulse or for the stage structure to withstand it.)

        • Dante80 says:
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          Yes, it is true. What you are saying is correct, but inside a logical TWR envelope.

          Vulcan is stated to use 2 engines of about 2000kN thrust each. For a theorized propulsive landing scenario, the gimbaling range of one engine is not enough to keep accuracy and 3dof control, so you have to use both. Even if we assume that the engines have very deep throttling capabilities (powerful stage 1 engines generally don’t), TWR is still too much for a controlled landing.

          For example, if you can deep throttle to 40% (unlikely), the stage could weigh about 30-35tonnes when landing while thrusting at…more than 160,000 kgf. That’s a TWR of 4.6!

          Moreover, the end landing is the least of your considerations when working with a TWR like that. You first have to get to the correct spot to decelerate. This cannot be accomplished by only aerodynamic surfaces, neither can it work with “quick re-firing of the engines”.

          Propulsive landing is completely out of the picture for Vulcan, with the current architecture ULA is pursuing for it. And it makes sense, since they are a priori designing the rocket for another re-usable method anyway. Hope that helps, cheers..C:

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      ULA claims that they plan on (eventually) replacing the Centaur with the ACES upper stage. ACES will certainly be more “capable” than Centaur allowing for more restarts and far longer “coast” time between firings. But, that increase in capability will almost certainly come with a relatively high second stage cost. My guess is that there will be certain customers willing to pay that cost because they need the new capabilities. But just how big will that market be? And for customers in that market, how much of a premium will customers be willing to pay for that capability?

      • duheagle says:
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        I think ULA wants to get to ACES ASAP because it is likely to be not only a better performer than Centaur but, mainly, a much cheaper one.

        Dante80, below, disputes the $38 million cost ascribed to the Centaur’s RL-10 engine by JonathanN3. Dante80 may be correct that the exact price ULA currently pays for each RL-10 is not necessarily that much, but I easily found a reference to the $38 million figure in a Parabolic Arc post from almost five years ago. A slightly earlier article from SpaceNews discusses the large increase in prices charged by what was then Pratt & Whitney-Rocketdyne for RL-10’s in the wake of the imminent shutdown of the Space Shuttle program. PWR was trying to keep all their facilities and staff and raised prices on their products that were still selling in order to do so. Since then, of course, PWR was sold off to Aerojet and the acquired operation has been downsized quite a bit. So what is the current price of an RL-10? Damfino, but it still may well be more than the $23 million per copy price that has recently been determined to be the unit price of ULA’s recent RD-180 purchases.

        I did my own analysis of Falcon 9 costs over a year ago, based on the rather modest difference in posted prices between the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, and agree with JonathanN3 that the fully burdened cost to SpaceX of each Merlin 1-D is roughly a million bucks. Elon is recently supposed to have said what a complete Falcon 9 “costs.” Some have reported him as having said $60 million. Others have reported him as having said $16 million.

        I, for one, am inclined to think the latter number is correct. First, it accords almost perfectly with a million dollar cost per engine. Second, it explains how Elon is able to pay 4,000 staff and still be cash flow positive. Not hard if you have a nearly 300% gross profit on each $62 million launch; impossible to do if your margin is only a million or two per launch.

        I think ULA knows this. They need to get huge amounts of cost out of their rockets. Right now, just the two engines for each of their “cheap” rockets, the Atlas V, cost roughly as much as SpaceX charges for a whole Falcon 9. Given this, the decision of ULA to go with a new engine supplier for their first stage, Blue Origin, makes perfect sense. I don’t know what a BE-4 is going to cost, but it will probably be in the same $2 – 3 million neighborhood I anticipate for SpaceX’s Raptor when those are finally coming off the line.

        For the ACES upper stage the RL-10 is, technically, still in the running, but I expect ULA to choose either the XCOR piston pump LOX-LH2 engine, which will provide roughly the same thrust as the RL-10, or the Blue Origin BE-3 which is about five times more powerful. Either of these can probably be procured in the required quantities for a million dollars apiece or less.

        The ACES stage will also have an auxiliary power unit based on an internal combustion LOX-LH2 engine built by Rausch Racing. This will be essentially a modified dry-sump formula car engine. In automotive trim such engines cost in the low six figures.

        ULA pretty much has to proceed with Vulcan or it will never have a cost basis for its product anywhere remotely near that of SpaceX. Even with new, much cheaper engines it’s no cinch bet that ULA can pull off an actually competitive platform, but their current lineup are uncompetitive boat anchors that cannot be cheaply fiddled and fussed into Falcon 9 beaters.

        Time to root, hog or die.

        • Dante80 says:
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          If you read my previous post again, you will see that I was talking precisely about the period you describe, regarding RL-10 prices. The price now is not $38M.

          Also, the current price is a priori somewhat irrelevant, since ULA wants to have a competition for ACES (between XCOR, ARJ and Blue). Either ARJ will give a good price if they win, or..they will lose the competition.

          • duheagle says:
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            I agreed that the current RL-10 price is almost certainly not still $38 million. But it probably is still similar, or maybe even a bit more per copy, than the $23 million ULA pays for each RD-180. Even if it’s a bit less than this, though, it’s certainly nowhere near the million bucks per copy SpaceX spends to build its own 2nd stage engine. My overall analysis is, I think, still sound; absent Vulcan, ULA has no future.

        • Jonna31 says:
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          The thing is, if the numbers out about Vulcan are to be believed, even Vulcan with ACES isn’t cheap enough.

          SpaceX”s development spiral has been almost too good to be believed. Super simple version: They build super cheap but powerful the Merlin Engine, put it on ever more capable and larger cores, adding more engines and enhancing them. And for their next trick, they’re going to strap cores together.

          It seems to be, step one for ULA, would be to basically clone Merlin. At least in general direction: a powerful rocket that is cheap to fabricate. Individually not nearly as powerful as a legacy engine, but when 8-10 of them are used, far more powerful.

          Except the Vulcan’s BE-4 is not that. A single BE-4 will have about 3.5 times the thrust of a Merlin 1D (give or take). I haven’t been able to find a cost attached to the BE-4 but this link from Aviation Week makes me think it will be expensive:

          http://aviationweek.com/spa

          So SpaceX will have a first stage with 1.3m lbf thrust where the bulk of the cost is in 9 Merlin 1D engines that cost a million a piece (so $9 million on just the engine component)

          Comparatively ULA’s first stage will have 1.1m lbf thrust from two BE-4 engines. Will the two BE-4 engines being saved come in at a total cost of less than $9 million? I rather doubt it. Especially when ULA is saying their target for (what I believe they are referring to as pre-ACES) Vulcan costs is less than $100 million.

          To me, this seems like the weakest imaginable effort. It seems almost intentionally noncompetitive. Is ULA’s plan really to spend five years producing a new rocket that when it launches, will be less economical than a competitor rocket that will have been flying by that point for something like ten years already?

          I’d go so far to say “patient zero” of what ails ULA isn’t lack of re-usability. That’d be a bonus to drive the cost down even further. It’s not having a base rocket that isn’t absurdly expensive to begin with. If in another world SpaceX had say, thrown a couple RS-68s on their rocket and done everything else the same (except use LH2 over RP1), they would have a base rocket several times as costly as a Falcon 9 to begin with. Because flying your rocket with $20 million engines when you can do it with a bunch of $1 million ones whose combined cost is far lower and can be produce in extreme mass quantities (SpaceX is producing something like 50 Merlin’s per month), is fundamentally the better route.

          That’s the crazy thing about Vulcan to me. As a way forward, it’s barely a step up from what they already have. It de-Russianizes the Atlas V…. and that’s pretty much it.

          • duheagle says:
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            You may wind up being right about Vulcan’s economics, but I didn’t see anything in the linked AvWeek article that leads me to believe the BE-4 is likely to be anywhere near as expensive per copy as the RD-180 and pretty much AJR’s entire product line have been. Blue Origin, like SpaceX, is a clean-sheet-of-paper type of place and this includes both their engine designs and their manufacturing infrastructure.

            The AvWeek piece was quite revelatory in other ways, though. ULA apparently intends to go to a lot of trouble, complication and weight penalty to stick an inflatable heat shield and a paraglider wing in the engine module to protect the engines from nasty re-entry heat, but first they’re going to set off a bunch of bombs to knack up the thrust frame and the propellant plumbing. Yikes! Hope those BE-4’s are built to the same turbopumps-able-to-swallow-a-3/8″-nut-without-damage criterion that SpaceX stipulated for its Merlin. Lord knows what jagged frags are going to get sucked through that complex staged-combustion turbomachinery that will probably still be spinning down as the “grenades” go off. Maybe the propellant inlets should be equipped with screens? The whole idea gives me the creeping horrors.

  23. richard_schumacher says:
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    Does SpaceX test fire its second stages on the ground? Presumably it would have to be with a short nozzle, but bolting on an extension for flight seems pretty low risk.